Recycling of waste materials is highly desirable from many viewpoints, not the least of which are financial and ecological. Properly sorted recyclable materials can often be sold for significant revenue. Many of the more valuable recyclable materials do not biodegrade within a short period, and so their recycling significantly reduces the strain on local landfills.
However, in many instances there has been no cost-effective method for achieving the necessary sorting. This has been particularly true for, for example, non-ferrous materials, and particularly for non-metallics such as high density plastics. For example, one approach to recycling plastics has been to station a number of laborers along a sorting line, each of whom manually sorts through shredded waste and manually selects the desired recyclables from the sorting line. This approach is not sustainable in most economics since the labor component is too high.
While ferrous recycling has been automated for some time, mainly through the use of magnets, this technique plainly is ineffective for sorting non-ferrous materials.
As a result, there has been a need for a cost-effective, efficient process, system and apparata for sorting dissimilar materials, including plastics, in a manner which facilitates significant revenue recovery while also significantly reducing landfill.